“... Marxist’s heaven? For Miller, the aim of a theory of justice should be to present what John Rawls called a ‘realistic utopia’. Political philosophers should be ‘contextualists’ as opposed to ‘universalists’ and their prescriptions ‘fact-based’ in the sense of acknowledging the findings of empirical psychology and sociology. But, as ...”

“... the Vleeshuis, sitting on fine Spanish leather chairs embossed with the figure of their patron, St John, accompanied by his flock of sheep and oxen; in the evenings, they retired to estates built on acres of quiet pasture just outside the city, with names like De Ribbe (the Rib) or De Ijseren Verckens (the Iron Pigs), Dlammeken (the Little Lamb) or ’t ...”

“... passages remain. Hair is no longer conceived of as finely-fashioned wire, but as soft and flowing freely; on the other hand, the soil remains hard and covered in tiny pebbles; a linen sleeve is blown back and a girdle flutters in the breeze, although much of the drapery retains a certain papery crispness. The artist’s earliest stylistic affinities may still ...”

“... War (Walzer endorses this opposition without offering any justification) and for his criticism of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann for writing pro-war propaganda. He is also (like all those up to this point in the rankings) considered methodologically sound by Walzer: ‘studying and clarifying the ideas of American democracy’ was, Bourne said, the ...”

“... dwelling without first stripping completely and then buttering himself’ – which I had freely adapted over the years to become: ‘he/she has to strip naked and grease themselves to get through a door.’ Ditto for exploded metaphors such as: ‘She had a set of parabolas that could have caused cardiac arrest in a yak.’ Or: ‘the zenith of ...”

“... Sartre and Beauvoir, Jean Genet and others – though none under B for Beckett, and none for John Berger, who was cool at first, then much warmer, coming under fire from David Sylvester – another S – for disparaging Giacometti’s work in the 1950s, and then for revising his opinion after the artist’s death in 1966. ‘Head of a ...”

“... in 1975. Thus, no stain is permitted to besmirch that narrative: few survivors feel able to speak freely about what took place. This opacity has been amazingly successful in defining the terms in which Western as well as Asian writers address the war.’ He goes on to argue that ‘in conducting its war effort, the Northern politburo enjoyed significant ...”

“... Center has gone, and that others might be coloured by the emergence of the anthrax threat and John Ashcroft’s rise to power. It must have been tempting to introduce a phoney topicality, but with ‘so much fresh outrageousness being manufactured daily’, Franzen allowed himself only ‘minimal tinkering’. For Foden, the difficulties were more ...”

“... specialises in strip-searching delinquent Mexican males, but finds true love in the arms of Big John, a massively-endowed black drug-pusher. There are riots and burning in the barrios, a fixed election, a major kidnapping, and a good old American assassination by a ‘lone crazed killer’ who keeps a picture of Jodie Foster in his drawer. ‘You can always ...”

“... Indian teams had to be captained by whites. The most notorious example was the reappointment of John Goddard to lead the tour of England in 1957 over the obviously superior claims of Frank Worrell. This particular anomaly led directly to defeat, and had its share in the disaster at Edgbaston in the first test, when Ramadhin was required to bowl 98 ...”

“... shot. Keeping as low as possible reduces the possibility of movement. The cue arm should glide freely back and forth, rather like a pendulum, but only the forearm should move; the bridge-hand is spread rigid on the cloth like a starfish; your eyes should be on the white ball at all times. These techniques involve hours of back-breaking ...”

“... cultural ascendancy was beginning. These artists – George Luks, Everett Shinn, William Glackens, John Sloan and George Bellows – had all (Bellows apart) started out in the 1890s as newspaper sketch-artists in Philadelphia. Drawn together by the magnetic preaching of Robert Henri, a slightly older painter who had returned from art school in Paris to his ...”

“... on him to discuss modern poetry. ‘He used the word “infidel”,’ Donoghue remembers, ‘more freely and more deliberately than I supposed it had ever been used since the 17th century,’ and risked taunts of ‘infidel’ himself by suggesting in a 1956 article that ‘The Dry Salvages’ was ‘quite simply rather a bad poem’ (Donoghue tends to ...”

“... and China in particular, sells books in the West and always has done. Marco Polo knew this, as did John Mandeville, that great early impresario of the exotic. It has appealed at a general level as a substantial, unknown space into which, with the right promptings, the individual imagination could rush, expand, unfurl and luxuriate. More specifically, it has ...”

“... garden, the picture on the caravan wall of an empty bowl. ‘He is a lithe man, handsome, moving freely about his home.’ The bowl, in a twist of complication, recalls to the priest something Kate said once, when they spent the night together: ‘She believed that in every conversation, an invisible bowl existed. Talk was the art of placing decent words ...”